Using ground-penetrating radar, 3-D laser scanners and high-resolution metal detectors, a team of researchers has produced a digital map that details what lies beneath the enigmatic ancient monument Stonehenge to a degree previously unseen. They revealed their findings at the British Science Festival in Birmingham on Wednesday.

"Most of the area around Stonehenge is terra incognita. It has never been explored and everything we think about Stonehenge is on the basis of what we don't know about it," the project's leader Professor Vincent Gaffney said at the festival on Wednesday.

"This is going to change how we view Stonehenge. It is not yet another find from Stonehenge, it's a fundamental step forward in the way we understand it," Gaffney added.

New findings

During its four-year study, the team discovered 17 previously unknown ritual monuments. The researchers were also able to detail dozens of burial mounds and a huge timber building, which was thought to have been used for burial ceremonies.

"New monuments have been revealed, as well as new types of monuments that have previously never been seen by archaeologists," Gaffney said.

The project unveiled, for example, new information about nearby Durrington Walls, inhabited 4,500 years ago, or roughly around the same time that the stone circle was erected. According to the new research, it was also flanked by dozens of stones up to three meters (10 feet) high.

The digital map also adds to previous research on the prehistoric monument, providing new details on burial mounds dating from the Bronze and Iron Ages, as well as from Roman settlements.

The University of Birmingham led the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, which was carried out in conjunction with the Vienna-based Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaelogical Prospection and Virtual Archaelogy. Other universities that collaborated with the project included the University of Bradford, the University of St. Andrews, the University of Nottingham and the University of Ghent.

kms/hc (AP, AFP)